3 Jul 2020 13:30

CEC confirms results of vote on constitutional amendments: 77.92% of votes for, 21.27% against

MOSCOW. July 3 (Interfax) - The Central Elections Commission (CEC) has confirmed results of the national vote on constitutional amendments: 77.92% of Russians voted for the amendments, and 21.27% were against.

The relevant draft resolution of the Central Elections Commission, "On Results of the Nationwide Voting on the Approval of Amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation," was unanimously approved at the CEC meeting on Friday.

"It passes unanimously. Congratulations everyone," CEC Chairperson Ella Pamfilova said.

There are 109,190,337 eligible voters in Russia, and 74,215,555 of them or 67.97% have come to polls, she said.

"The question 'whether you support the amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation', which was put to the national vote, was answered 'yes' by 57.747, 288 Russian citizens or 77.92% of all citizens who took part in the vote," Pamfilova said.

"By law, the number of citizens who take part in the vote is calculated by the number of voting papers cast into ballot boxes. Some people took voting papers and left. So, the precise count of votes is done exclusively by the number of voting papers found in ballot boxes," she said.

"Documents, protocols and tables are objective evidence of every result of the vote," Pamfilova said.

Two members of elections commissions in Russian constituent territories, representatives of the Communist Party, refused to sign commission protocols on the voting results in the Altai Territory and the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous District, she said.

"The CEC received 13 protocols from elections commissions of Russian constituent territories, which cited 15 minority opinions of 11 commission members representing the Communist Party, two representing Yabloko, one representing the Liberal Democratic Party, and another one representing A Just Russia. Minority opinions do not contain facts evidencing violations in the course of the ballot and the count of votes, which could call into question the reliability of results of the expression of will by Russian citizens," Pamfilova said.

"The minority opinions did not prevent those commission members from voting for final protocols," she said.